This post has the following content warnings:
Iomedae in Novapest.
Permalink

The war began nine days ago and it has, really, been decided.

(The two women are dueling in the streets, blades clashing, fire raining down from the battlefield.)

There were a few assassinations that might have made it go differently, if they'd succeeded, a few bombs that might have gone off better, a few hirelings who might have said yes.

(The ordinary soldiers fight with anti-tank rifles and poison gas grenades and the deadly dreams of madmen.)

But that didn't happen.

(Few of the soldiers are ordinary. One side favors the Steelstorm Industries Mk. VI Levy and Livia's Legion. The other puts its faith in knights and monsters.)

The odds were always against it.

(Lightning whips across the battlefield, hissing through the soldiers whose symbols aren't blue and silver before striking the blue-and-silver armor of a woman who does not expect to ever be mistaken for anyone else.)

There's just not enough, on the pretender's side; not enough knights, not enough brains, not enough money.

(The red-and-purple armor is a bloody bruise and would be too stained to be recognizable if the speed at which the stains grew did not distinguish it all on its own.)

Maybe if she'd managed to bring down the shield, maybe someone would have come to help.

(The shield is a dome that cleaves sky and sea to shroud Novapest in an impenetrable bubble, misty grey to allow just a little light in, but not enough to burn.)

The numbers are now almost ten to three, and smart generals don't fight at ten to three.

(Artillery shells strike every clump of men, and the men are unclumped, fighting in the streets behind cover and in the houses.)

Some would say that if she'd been more sensible she never would have taken the risk.

(The frozen woman does not fight often. She fights now for the student she has chosen, for men and metal both shatter where she walks, should she will it.)

Others that she shouldn't have taken them at any odds.

(Here and there the sky will blacken and a pillar of flame will strike, as the eye of the gods opens and the sun's wrath smites the ground.)

Some fights you just can't win.

(The knights of Ilderia die in the streets, and the armies of the rest of Novapest advance.)

Most fights, when you're up against the Titanium Tyrant.

Total: 546
Posts Per Page:
Permalink

Trying to Plane Shift Iomedae is kind of a bizarre thing to do, all things considered. It's will-defended, and she's a paladin. 

Having ten people try to Plane Shift her at once is not a bizarre thing to do. It indicates Tar-Baphon cared more about seeing her destroyed than she'd expected, but -

 

 

 

She rolls to her feet on a strange plane.

It would've been bizarre for them to have planned this as far as that and not to have been very sure the plane was, you know, either a very specialized containment demiplane or Abaddon, but this doesn't look especially like either of those.  

Permalink

It doesn't look like it's specialized in either containment or in eating everyone who enters! The obvious comparisons would be to paintings of Axis, with fantastically tall buildings and strange machinery everywhere, except that the gutters in Axis are less clogged with blood.

Speaking of which: A lot of very high-level people are fighting. Really quite a lot. There are small metal projectiles (like slingstones but made of iron?) going everywhere faster than a normal eye can see, and there's some kind of horrid acidic stuff eating a hole in the ground over there and releasing toxic fumes, and some big constructs are advancing down the street over there shooting projectiles everywhere that explode when they hit, though a fellow in blue-and-white-and-red full plate with a pair of flaming knives coming out of the gauntlets is disassembling one of them. The street is black asphalt and there's stone walkways on the sides and tall buildings on the sides of there and smoking craters have been blasted into them and there's people behind cover shooting at other people behind cover with all sorts of deadly weapons. There's a big monster made of spiky black basalt with huge claws and fangs (Evil) that is trying to fight someone in Very Fancy blue and white full plate (or a golem?) with daggers in her gauntlets and pauldrons that have energy attacks built into them not far away, and it's not going well for the monster, and then a long ways down at a crossroads a Colossal plant monster is shooting clawed branches at soldiers armed with flame-spewing siphons, and this really does not look like the sort of place most people want to be in. Some sorcerer (or something?) with glowing energy powers is swooping down to blow up a bunch of constructs, and someone else with a blue and white badge but in green armor appears to be making a building's foundations dissolve into acid so that it falls on enemy troops inside it, and in the sky above winged bat-monsters are swarming a screaming flying woman in black and silver whose screams are Really Bad for the bat-monsters -

She is in the middle of the street, in a crossroads. The sky is grey with weird mist. It is Really Very Exceedingly Loud.

Permalink

(Ilderia is not, actually, surprised when a woman in medieval armor appears out of nowhere in the street, but saying 'Not friendly' isn't her job, that's Century's job, her job is to kill Devastator - sweep under his arm here, strike upwards with a left-handed punch here, the armor-blades are made as an anti-brick weapon, and he stumbles back and she lunges right-handed into his chest nd he might be alive but he's not getting up soon -)

"Forward!" (Lightning crackles and sweeps three of the Tyrant's snipers aside.) "They cannot stand against us!"

(They cannot stand against her. They cannot stand against Zero, or Firesteel, or Starwalker. They can stand against her men.)

Permalink

This isn't how she figured Abaddon looked but she doesn't actually know enough to dispute it, and Plane Shift doesn't let you target a location within a plane very precisely. (It's definitely not a customized demiplane meant to kill her, that would've just succeeded.)

Priorities are staying alive and - not permitting a scry, probably, both sides could be looking for her but Arazni has her hair -

- she gets hit by an exploding projectile, which hits hard, like a Meteor Swarm, though she's still on her feet - 

- and if she cannot stay alive then priority is not leaving a body, for which some options look convenient. But for now she's going to try to run away.

Permalink

It takes her only seconds to get off the street and into one of the houses that does not obviously have anyone in it; unfortunately, that's because it non-obviously has someone in it. Someone (who is not in full plate armor, but baggy grey-and-green clothes with any metal in his armor covered by cloth) who is covering the door and looks completely exhausted will point a stick* at her center of mass as she comes through in an attempt to make a lot of small iron balls hit her in the torso and so kill her.

(There's a little blue and silver shield on his left breast, a silver slash of forking lightning on a sunny blue day.) 

Permalink

She's faster. She's Hasted, not completely exhausted, and generally faster than people even when neither of those things are true. She'll shove his wand arm so the spell expends uselessly against the wall behind her and then tackle him. Trying not to hurt him. He looks - human? Probably she's not in Abaddon. 

"I have no allegiances in this fight but intend to defend myself," she says in Taldane as she does this. Hopefully they have Tongues up; Aroden grants it, to paladins when other gods don't at all and to his priests at third circle when other gods offer it at fourth, but she didn't prepare it today. ...in an emergency, she's occasionally asked Aroden for spells she didn't prepare and He's offered them, and this is arguably such an emergency, but -

 

 

- no, no buts, this is totally such an emergency. He can refuse her if it's not worth the cost. Tongues, please. 

 

Permalink

She's a lot stronger than he is, and he's slammed into the floor hard enough that he has trouble concentrating, but he doesn't need to concentrate for his reflexes to try to throw her off him while yelling something incomprehensible that becomes "Get her off me!" halfway through and someone else in the building (there appear to be multiple people in this building, and probably in most buildings near the fighting) will try to shoot her, at an angle that won't hit his pal if something happens.

Permalink

Glances off her.

"I have no allegiances in this fight but intend to defend myself," she says again, this time in the unfamiliar tongue the man is speaking, and she heals herself and throws her Seeking dagger at whoever's trying to shoot her and smites him as she does that, half in curiosity about whether he's evil. (She could tell by looking, but there's a lot going on right now.)

Permalink

The Seeking dagger drops the person she throws it at, but he's apparently still breathing, so probably not Evil?

"Hold fire!" someone snaps, but there's still a lot of wands pointed at her. "What are you doing here?"

(Update on the house: It's the bottom floor of somewhere with a lot of floors. There's sandbags piled in front of the windows and most of the doors, though she seems to have burst through without any trouble. The soldiers are mostly dressed like the one she tackled, they're almost all men, but the one who just asked her a question is - uncannily handsome, wearing a blue and silver breastplate, and with a sword as well as a gun.)

Permalink

"Says she's neutral," says a different Century on the knights' shared radio.

Permalink

Devastator's down. So's this robot. So's that robot. So's that one. (Ilderia is very unfair to robots, and to anything else that needs a charged battery to fight.)

"Want me to see if I can de-neutral her?" The Pretender's voice is playful.

Permalink

 - probably if they all fire those wands many of them will hit, even though she's got good protections up right now. She wants to make the sword Defending but it'll glow and make it look like she's starting something after they ordered a 'hold fire'.

 

She raises her free hand, cautiously. "Hostile Plane Shift. I don't know where I am. I don't know what you're fighting over. I'll heal civilians, if you have any of those, and I'll heal the man I injured." - leader Evil?

Permalink

If he is, he's not strong enough to trigger a reading.

"We're fighting to overthrow the Tyrant." Someone else is trying to do something about the man with a hole right above the top of his flak jacket, to stop the blood from flowing. "Civilians are back of the line, and we'll take healing."

Permalink

"Her explanation is 'hostile plane shift.'"

Permalink

"You know, I think I like her."

Permalink

"You like everyone."

(The building - not the one Iomedae is in - crashes with an earshattering wreck that spills oil over the battlefield, and he turns his attention to Greenrose.)

Permalink

"Just the people who deserve it."

Permalink

They're fighting Tar-Baphon? Why would he have sent her to another battlefield on which he was also -

 

"Aroden, restore these people to their strength - say more about this Tyrant?" she says, and does a channel to heal everybody. They could of course be lying, but she's not that bad at noticing that, none of the other men looked surprised at the claim, it's not a very implausible claim in the first place, and Aroden did give her Tongues which He's less likely to have done if negotiating here was a bad idea. 

And even if they're not fighting Tar-Baphon and this is a doomed rebellion against a normal empire, well, it never hurts to make friends.

Permalink

"The Titanium Tyrant conquered Saint-Andrews twenty years ago, renamed it Novapest, and handed it to his flunkies to run," says Century flatly. "They're a gang of thugs who kill, steal, or do whatever else they want. Ilderia's going to stop him, and we're helping."

"You goddamn said it," growls one of the soldiers.

Permalink

("You really want to talk to her.")

Permalink

"Acerbus, keep them going."

And she'll head over.

Permalink

It's a pretty good pitch, if you knew Iomedae and how to effectively pitch her, which they in fact might. 

 

'Titanium Tyrant' isn't a title she's ever heard of. 

 

 

"May I activate a wand of Sending to contact my commander," she says. 

Permalink

“If it doesn’t injure anyone here.”

Permalink

Have they not heard of wands of Sending.  She switches back to Taldane. 

 

"Location unknown, war zone, urgent gold, locals identified Saint Andrews Novapest, fighting Titanium Tyrant, orders?"

Permalink

She does not get an answer. 

Total: 546
Posts Per Page: